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Uruguay Fertility, Mortality, and Population Growth
Uruguay's population has grown slowly throughout its
history,
reaching the 1 million mark early in the twentieth
century. In
the twentieth century, the rate of population growth
declined
steadily, however, despite significant amounts of
immigration and
virtually halted in the 1950s. Registered at over 2
percent in
1916, the annual growth rate had dropped to 1.4 percent by
1937.
It continued in the 1.2 to 1.5 percent range until 1960,
but in
the 1960s population growth averaged only 1 percent
annually. In
the 1970s, the average annual growth rate was even lower,
at 0.4
percent. In the 1981-88 period, annual population growth
was 0.7
percent, but in 1990 it was 0.6 percent.
A major contributor to the slow population growth rate
was
Uruguay's low, and declining, crude birth rate. It fell
steadily
throughout the first half of the twentieth century, from
38.9 per
1,000 population in the 1900-04 period to 21.1 per 1,000
in the
1945-49 period, where it more or less stabilized through
the mid1960s . In the 1980-85 period, the birth rate was 19.5 per
1,000.
In 1987 it was estimated at 17.5, and in 1990 it was
estimated at
17 per 1,000. (In comparison, the birth rates for
Argentina,
Brazil, and the United States in 1990 were 20 per 1,000,
26 per
1,000, and 15 per 1,000, respectively.) This relatively
low birth
rate was usually ascribed to Uruguay's prosperity and the
widespread availability of contraception. Given the
secularization of Uruguayan society at the beginning of
the
twentieth century, the influence of the Roman Catholic
Church was
minor
(see Religion
, this ch.). The total fertility rate
in 1990
was 2.4 children born per woman.
The crude death rate, which had averaged 14 to 15 per
1,000
since the 1895-99 period, began to decline significantly
starting
in the 1920s. In the 1940s, it reached 10 per 1,000, and
it has
stayed at approximately this level every since. In 1987
the crude
death rate was estimated at 9.5 per 1,000 and in 1990 at
10 per
1,000.
Advances in medicine resulted in longer life
expectancy.
Uruguay's General Directorate of Statistics and Census
noted that
overall life expectancy in the 1984-86 period was 71.6
years
(68.4 years for men and 74.9 years for women). Estimates
in 1990
placed life expectancy for males at seventy years and that
for
females at seventy-six years. Because Uruguayans were
living
longer, the population began to age. By the census year of
1963,
demographers already were beginning to worry that the
rising
proportion of the population in retirement might
overstrain the
country's social security system
(see Social Security Pensions
, this ch.). The 1975 and 1985 censuses confirmed the
acceleration
of this aging trend. The trend was aggravated as net
immigration,
which had characterized Uruguay in the early twentieth
century,
gave way to net emigration and the exodus in particular of
young,
well-educated Uruguayans.
Data as of December 1990
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